Keith Hair

Scripting is fun like any other hobby

May 30 2008

Find and Replace for XML in AS3

Posted by: Keith H in ActionScript 3, XML, tags: ActionScript 3, XML

These are some functions I wrote for finding and replacing parts of XML using AS3.
Not sure if E4X or "XML.replace()" method can be used to make each function's task better.

 
/*-----------------------------------
	Recursively replace nodeNames.
-------------------------------------*/
      private function findAndReplaceTagNames
      (xml:XML,find:String,replace:String):XML
      {
          if(xml.localName() == find){
              xml.setLocalName(replace);
          }
          var n:int=0;
          var c:XML;
          while(n <xml.children().length()){
              c=xml.children()[n];
              findAndReplaceTagNames(c,find,replace);
              n++;
          }
          return xml;
      }
 
/*-----------------------------------------
	Recursively replace attributes.
-------------------------------------------*/
      private function findAndReplaceAttributeNames
      (xml:XML,find:String,replace:String,in_tags_named:String=""):XML
      {
          var ok:Boolean=true;
          if(in_tags_named != "" && xml.localName() != in_tags_named){
              ok=false;
          }
          if(xml.@[find] != null && ok){
              xml.@[replace]=xml.@[find];
              delete xml.@[find];
          }
          var n:int=0;
          var c:XML;
          while(n <xml.children().length()){
              c=xml.children()[n];
              findAndReplaceAttributeNames(c,find,replace);
              n++;
          }
          return xml;
      }
 
/*---------------------------------------------
	Recursively find and remove attributes.
-----------------------------------------------*/
      private function findAndRemoveAttributeNames
      (xml:XML,find:String,in_tags_named:String=""):XML
      {
          var ok:Boolean=true;
          if(in_tags_named != "" && xml.localName() != in_tags_named){
              ok=false;
          }
          if(xml.@[find] != null && ok){
              delete xml.@[find];
          }
          var n:int=0;
          var c:XML;
          while(n <xml.children().length()){
              c=xml.children()[n];
              findAndRemoveAttributeNames(c,find);
              n++;
          }
          return xml;
      }

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 12:26 am and is filed under ActionScript 3, XML.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Find and Replace for XML in AS3”

mkecman says: September 15th, 2009 at 6:32 pm

Thank you for posting findAndRemoveAttributeNames function! Really helped me!
evildave says: May 12th, 2010 at 4:04 am

That’s a nice example of XML eating syntax.

Another little trick…

xml = new XML(xml.toXMLString().replace(regex,replacement));

Notionally it’s just like opening the XML file in an editor and doing a regular expression search and replace.

When it works, it works great, but there are many situations where it won’t work, and it can become a trap for the unwary.

One particular example is just ‘hacking’ a remote web site with links to ‘http://somewhere.live/etc’ to ‘./localfolder’ when you load XML, so that you can test lots of XML configured website crapola without maintaining a second copy of EVERYTHING.